Murfreesboro, Tennessee, is already beginning to implement the law.
A city in Tennessee is using a recently passed ordinance essentially prohibiting homosexuality in public to try to ban library books that might violate the new rules.
Murfreesboro passed an ordinance in June banning “indecent behavior,” including “indecent exposure, public indecency, lewd behavior, nudity or sexual conduct.” As journalist Erin Reed first reported, this ordinance specifically mentions Section 21-72 of the city code. The city code states that sexual conduct includes homosexuality.
Anyone who violates the new ordinance is barred from hosting public events or selling goods and services at public events for two years. Anyone who violates the ordinance “in the presence of minors” is barred for five years.
An ACLU-backed challenge to the ordinance has already been launched, but that hasn’t stopped city officials from implementing the measure. Last Monday, the Rutherford County steering committee met to discuss removing all books that might potentially violate the ordinance from the public library. The resolution was met with widespread outcry from city residents.
“When have the people who ban books ever been the good guys?” local activist Keri Lambert demanded during the Monday county meeting.
Murfreesboro city officials have already used the ordinance to ban four books that discuss LGBTQ themes. In August, the county library board pulled the books Flamer, Let’s Talk About It, Queerfully and Wonderfully Made, and This Book Is Gay.
The board also implemented a new library card system that categorizes books into certain age groups. When it takes effect next year, children and teenagers will only be able to check out books that correspond to their age group; they will need permission from a parent or guardian to check out “adult” books.
Library director Rita Shacklett worried in August that the new rules would prevent students from accessing books they need for a class. She explained that many classic high school books, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, are now classified as “adult.”
It’s unclear if the county steering committee plans to pull books such as the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which includes multiple depictions of heterosexual sexual conduct.
Murfreesboro’s new ordinance is part of a much larger wave of attacks on LGBTQ rights in Tennessee and the rest of the country. In the past year, the so-called Volunteer State became the first state to try to ban drag performances. That law was overturned in court.
In March, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow people to refuse to perform a marriage if they disagree with it, essentially gutting marriage equality. The bill was introduced in the Senate but deferred until next year.
link: https://newrepublic.com/post/176915/tennessee-town-ban-public-homosexuality
archive link: https://archive.ph/LFMMK
If you were straight, there’d be no conceivable reason as upset as you are about a small town in Tennessee which you don’t even live in banning homosexual acts in public in front of minors.
There simply is no good reason children ever need to see this, just like they don’t need to see their parents having sex.
“When they came for the gays, I didnt speak up because I wasnt gay…”
I know how the poem goes. And there is no good reason for children to ever see a church or a priest or missionary or any other of the closeted pedophiles hiding behind the First Amendment, so start advocating for not brainwashing kids before their brains have fully formed and maybe we’ll talk.
Again, you’re acting as if not allowing people to be gay in front of kids is equivalent to putting them in extermination camps, or that putting them in camps is the next logical step. It’s not. They’re not prohibiting people from being gay, they’re just limiting where and how it can be expressed when children are involved. And no, it’s not a free speech issue, we have age limits for violent movies being shown in public as well (which can of course freely be skirted at home, just like parents in Murfreesboro can still decide to teach their children about homosexuality at home).
Also, sexual abuse is far more common in public schools than it is at church. Here’s a few links for you:
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna5332880 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/student-student-sexual-assault-common-thought https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/15/sexual-violence-reports-rise-drastically-at-schools-education-department-data-shows-429663
You’re in a park. Children are playing. A man and woman walk by holding hands. A few minutes later two men walk by holding hands. Who gets arrested under the Murfreesboro law?
Look buddy, we’ve been over this before. I already posted the link before, but I’m happy to go over it again.
Did you see “holding hands” mentioned anywhere in there? Yeah, me neither. Holding hands is perfectly okay. Even kissing isn’t mentioned here. This whole thread (and the article) is simply much ado about nothing. Like I said before, the thing they’re upset about is that homosexuality is explicitly mentioned. What they forgot to tell you is that it isn’t exclusively mentioned. Same rules for everyone. Perfectly egalitarian.
And yet throughout the entire argument you insisted it was to stop forced homosexuality on children. Over and over again you said this. You switched to sea lioning when you couldnt hold that position any longer. Here’s what you wackos don’t get: children dont understand sexuality. They dont think about it. They don’t care if two dudes (or women, that counts also) are really close friends or even if they love each other because children don’t have that concept of love which you obsess over. It’s only YOU who sexualizes children, and that’s why you think you need a law and books banned (and as asked earlier, when have book banners ever been the good guys?).
No, I didn’t say they’re forcing them to be homosexual, they’re encouraging it. Which you say is a good thing because some people are simply born that way and they’re only learning to accept themselves for who they are.
However, studies found that LGBT individuals reported higher rates of childhood abuse and worse mental health as adults than straight people, which poses the question whether being gay is something they’re born with or the result of sexual abuse.
The liberal answer to this is that they already were gay to begin with and the abuse is the result of them not being accepted, and if people only accepted this fact, it would end the abuse, but that seems to be putting the cart before the horse, because it’s like saying “I may have stolen something from you, but if you agree it wasn’t yours to begin with, it wasn’t really theft after all”. It also doesn’t explain why they continue to suffer from worse mental health as adults, that’s why you have to come up with things like “systemic oppression” to explain why they continue to feel victimized.
The conservative position is that homosexuality is, more often than not, the result of childhood abuse and the effect of continued trauma caused by the fact that the abuse was never punished, i.e. the abuser got away with it, which causes the victim to live in constant emotional distress over the fear that it might happen again, and results in the victim punishing themselves by constantly re-inflicting that trauma in the form of supposedly consensual homosexual activity.
Now, from a logical standpoint, there is no reason that homosexuality should exist, because it serves no biological purpose. It’s an evolutionary dead end because it has no way of reproducing itself genetically since it cannot produce offspring by natural means, unless you’re willing to say childhood abuse is natural, in which case encouraging homosexuality is helping child abusers to get away with their crimes. And this is exactly why conservatives are so opposed to LGBT education. And the fact that the more homosexuality has become acceptable in society has lead to a huge increase in people identifying as LGBT, but not to better mental health outcomes for these people, seems to prove their position correct. And no matter how much you press them on it, liberals don’t seem to have a good answer to explain this phenomenon; they just keep insisting that if only we did more to accept them as they are, they would stop feeling so oppressed.
Do YOU have a good answer for this? Or are you just going to call me a fascist some more?